


The Cheerleader and the Quarterback

by ghost_lingering



Category: Prince of Tennis
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-27
Updated: 2009-04-27
Packaged: 2017-10-03 03:45:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghost_lingering/pseuds/ghost_lingering
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She has calmed down, some, over the years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cheerleader and the Quarterback

**Author's Note:**

> I've been writing this fic for over two years; it's been a long time coming. It was supposed to just be a crack pairing, but, instead, it turned into something else. Also, I know that they probably wouldn't all end up at the same schools, but, really...I don't care. Beta'd by lj user equals mordororbust P.S. What I don't tell you is that Fuji's twelfth counter is called the hummingbird drop shot.

She has calmed down, some, over the years. This year for Kantou she and Sakuno only made a large banner to unfurl in the crowd, having long since left behind the pom-poms and the cheerleader outfits. But she still screams the loudest, and, at the end of each day, he buys her Ponta to help her sore throat.

"You shouldn't cheer so loudly," he admonishes, but she shakes her head and sniffs.

"_Someone_ needs to show team spirit," she says and that's the end of that.

Theirs is a suprising relationship. She appeared in his math class a few weeks into the year, the teacher saying that she tested out of the lower levels and would be joining them for the remander of the term. He expected her to be loud and bossy, or, worse, embarassing--telling the class about the tennis team, about how he is the vice-captain. Instead she was dead silent her first week of class, sinking into her seat every time one of the other girls passed her desk and mumbling whenever the teacher called on her to answer. She never acknowledged him once.

She corners him after their match with Hyotei, when he is talking with Atobe, both of them polite, but itching to pick up a racket and step on a court. "That was disappointing," she says, frowning, "you didn't even _play_." She turns to the other vice-captain. "He would have beat you, this time," she says, "Now that his shoulder is healed, you wouldn't stand a chance."

She pauses, and Tezuka straightens his back a little, bracing himself for whatever she is planning on doing next. She breaks into a smile and grabs his hand, heedless of Atobe's raised eyebrows, and drags him behind her. "An said the street courts are free," she says, looking over her shoulder and jerking her head at Atobe for him to follow, "You two can play your match there."

"What about Sakuno?" Tezuka asks, and she shrugs, not even slowing down, "Kachiro was taking her for ice cream I think." He and Atobe share a glance. They should both be with their teams now, but instead they are going to play the match they didn't get to in tournament. Tezuka wonders how Tomo knew neither of them would resist.

This is not the Tomo of those first weeks of math class, but, instead, the one he was used to seeing standing outside fences at practise. It drove him crazy, at first, that she tried not to talk in class, especially when it became clear that she understood the concepts better than nearly everyone else. He sat next to Taka in class, who scratched his head and asked, "Wasn't that the girl who always cheered for us in middle school? She seems so different." But at the tennis practices after school she was much the same, yelling loudly, standing next to Sakuno, distracting Horio, Kachiro, and Katsuo.

"I don't understand it," he told Fuji once, playing a match behind Echizen's house. It was always odd, playing at the temple, a tradition Momo started back when Tezuka and the others were freshmen at the high school and not allowed on the regulars. Tezuka doesn't know how Momo found out that Echizen's cousin was out of the house more than in ever since her aunt and uncle weren't there to supervise her, but privately he was relieved.

Momo, driven crazy by the fact that Kaidoh was the only person on the middle school team who had a chance at beating him, and Eiji, driven crazy by the fact that he and Oishi didn't get to play doubles, started to sneak in, playing an odd game here or there. Oishi came next, then Fuji, and Kaidoh showed up frowning and nervous that they would get into trouble. Eiji said that Inui had probably been there from the beginning, hiding in bushes taking notes, and soon Taka would come on weekends when he could get away from the resturant. Fuji had invited Tezuka at the beginning, but it was a full four months before he stopped walking by Echizen's house and finally just let himself go in.

He asked Fuji about Tomo a week before regionals, on a Sunday night, the yellow ball blending into the navy sky. Fuji's eyes were open, Tezuka finally hitting the balls in just the right way to tease out his twelfth counter. It was the fourth set they played, and Tezuka stumbled to the side of the court when they finished, flopping down on his back and looking at the sky. Fuji grabbed a few bottles of water and tossed one at Tezuka before pouring his own over his head.

"Maybe she just likes tennis," Fuji said, "maybe around a court she's a completely different person." He looked over at Tezuka, closed his eyes, and smiled. "Thank you for playing with me today. We'll definately win at regionals."

The next day Tezuka spent the hour of math looking at the back of Tomo's head and trying to remember if he had ever watched her play a match.

Tomo has watched him play many matches. She is right, via An, about the street courts--when they arrive no one is there to stop them from playing. Atobe takes out his racket and rolls his shoulders and looks at Tezuka.

"Smooth or rough?" he asks, but Tezuka shrugs.

"You can have the first serve." They go to opposite sides of the net, and Tezuka waits for the spinning ball.

Tezuka never would have talked to Tomo, if it hadn't been for her intrusion upon his studies, but something that used to be so typical and brash suddenly turning into such an enigma was off-putting. It was as if Eiji had suddenly become the Fuji of the team, if Fuji had become the Oishi.

He approached her at regionals, between the doubles matches and the singles against Yambuki, while she was trying to get the vending machine to spit out the Ponta she bought. He watched for a moment, then went up against the side of the machine and threw his weight against it, once, then twice, and a third time, until he heard the drop of her can. She looked up at him, wide eyed and silent, and it was like all the times in math when he knew she had the answer and refused to give it. He crouched down and took the Ponta, stood up and offered it to her.

"Thank you for cheering for us," he said, then started to walk back to the courts.

"Do you want any?" she called, when he was a few paces away. Her voice was hoarse from the cheering and when he turned around she was blushing. "It's grape."

He shook his head. "I don't drink carbonation," he said, "It's bad for the body."

She ran up to him as he was speaking, then stopped, suddenly, not quite sure what to do. She opened her mouth, then closed it again.

"We should study sometime," he said, "together. For math class." Math didn't come as easily to him as history or biology, and after his second year of middle school, he refused to study with Inui. "If you don't mind," he added.

She nodded. "Good luck," she said, her voice quiet, and still hoarse.

Tezuka loses the first game to Atobe, but he keeps his service game, and it is in the third that everything dissolves into a scramble for the ball, for the points, for that last shot on the court. Each have grown beyond middle school now, though Atobe still names his moves after operas. Tezuka slips his racket from hand to hand, unconsciously, moving like the spin on the ball, but harder to read.

Tomo is strangely silent as she watches them play, something else that has changed since middle school. For all that she cheers at competitions, she has a tendency, now, to get caught up in the game, to get carried away, to forget to cheer.

Seigaku won regionals and advanced on, and neither Tomo or Tezuka mentioned the promise to study. Practices were longer now, full of Inui-designed programs and threats of juice. Tezuka was swamped with work, besides, and he often noticed how Tomo would sit and do her homework during the practices, how she often looked tired enough to fall asleep, how she was the only fan who came with any regularity anymore.

Fuji asked about her at lunch one day, sneaking into Tezuka's classroom and handing over a bento.

"I made it myself," Fuji told him, poking him with chopsticks, trying to get him to eat the food, "I promise there is not much wasabi." Fuji's eyes were closed, but he was being serious so Tezuka sighed and started to eat.

"What do you think is the matter?" Fuji asked, frowning.

Tezuka shrugged. "Oishi said that many of her classes are at an advanced level, but beyond that..." He wanted to add that she was not his responsibility, that she was only a classmate, a member of his school, but he did not.

"I wonder if she plays tennis," Fuji said, taking a wasabi roll from his own bento and chewing slowly.

There was no practice that afternoon--a thunderstorm and upcoming exams making their coach go soft, cancelling practice to the promise of double practice that weekend. Tezuka gathered his things, his tennis racket, his math book, getting ready to leave, when he heard crying from the girl's bathroom. No one was around, the hallways empty and dark, everyone already rushing home to get out of the rain.

He paused, then called out. "Are you alright?" He coughed and looked around. Boys were not supposed to linger outside of women's bathrooms.

The crying stopped. There was the rustling of books, some running water and footsteps, the door opening--

"I'm fine," Tomo told him, smiling brightly--but there were still rings under her eyes and she looked tired. "Thank you for asking Tezuka-san."

She walked past him, but he reached out and caught her arm. "Do you--" he began, but didn't continue.

"I'm fine," she said again with more force, shaking off his hand, "I'm fine."

He nodded. "Alright," he said, "I believe you." They stood there for a moment, looking at each other. "Do you play tennis?" he asked. She nodded. "Then I'd like a match with you," he said, "If you wouldn't mind."

Tezuka beats Atobe, barely, a trickle of sweat down his back as they shake slippery hands over the net. Atobe has also calmed down--some--over the years and he foregoes his dramatic gestures for a half smile and a nod at Tomo.

"Thank her for me," he says, before he snaps at Kabaji who has materialized, suddenly and quietly, to shoulder Atobe's bag. "Next time," he throws over his shoulder as he leaves, and Tezuka allows himself a brief upturned corner of his mouth.

He walks over to Tomo and holds out his hand. She ignores it, pressing a water bottle into his palm instead. "You might be dehydrated," she tells him, looking up into his eyes.

In the hallway of their school he looked down at her and grasped her shoulder. "Play tennis with me," he said, "someday," and she had, long moments later, nodded.

He walked her home in the rain, and they didn't talk of having a match again. Tezuka was relieved, as he had not wanted to play Tomo on wet courts: he worried that she would hurt herself from inexperience. Instead, they talked of other things as they walked. She slowly told him about Sakuno's budding romance with Kachiro, how her friend had little time for her anymore; she told him about cheering for her brothers who had begun playing soccer in a junior league; she told him about a manga she was reading; about the music she kept on her ipod, an ipod she bought with money she earned over weekends tutoring her neighbor.

When they reached her house he paused, shy, unsure how to proceed. "Would you like to come in?" she asked, not seeing his uncertainty, "It would be nice to study with someone for once."

He said yes, before he thought it through, but the smile lit her face and he couldn't take it back. They sat in her kitchen and he met her aunt and uncle who were reserved and kind, if slightly disapproving that their neice potentially had a suitor. He would have reassured them except he wasn't sure, himself, what he would say.

When he got home that night he stared for a long time at the neat rows of answers that Tomo eased out of him, prodding and prompting just enough to let him figure it out on his own.

By now Tomo's aunt and uncle, and Tezuka's own parents, are used to the friendship. If either suspects it is more they don't say it. The pair walks back from the street courts, Tomo excitedly recounting the game, acting out Tezuka's and Atobe's parts with an imaginary tennis racket and ball.

"You were wonderful," she tells him as they turn the corner to Echizen's house, "It would have made a brilliant match in the tournament."

The rest of his team--that's how he always thinks of them, even when he has played along side others--is already there. They are used to seeing Tomo with him, and, he suspects, it is only out of respect for her that they forgo any ribbing about her presence.

"You skipped out on us!" Momo yells, "What was that?!" but he quiets, or at least turns his attention, when Kaidoh shoves his stomach. He lets out an injured, "Hey!" over Kaidoh's hissed frown, and tackles his rival just as Kaidoh turns away. Inui watches them and jots notes as they descend into their familiar bickering.

"How did the match go?" Oishi asks, shifting his attention away from the quarrel. He smiles at Tezuka, and Eiji comes and drapes himself over Oishi's shoulders.

"You beat him, right?" Eiji asks, smiling.

"I did," Tezuka confirms, and watches as Tomo goes and sits by the sideline, getting out a textbook and reading. "I hope we were not missed."

Oishi shakes his head. "A brief pep talk about tomorrow's matches," he says, "I made your excuses to the coach."

"Thank you," Tezuka says, as he watches Tomo look up from her reading to watch Fuji and Taka hit a ball back and forth across the net. They are relaxed, almost, or as cloase to relaxed as those two get on a court--Fuji's eyes closed, and Taka slightly less fearsome than usual.

"You should ask her out," Oishi says, startling Tezuka, who has gone back to watching her, as she turns pages, and makes a note of something in the margin. "I think she would like that--I think you both would."

"There is a 99.8% chance she would say yes," Inui adds, appearing behind them suddenly.

Tezuka doesn't respond, opting, instead, to watch as Fuji wins the last point. He and Taka make their way over to where Tezuka and the others stand, foregoing a handshake for the familiar bumping of their shoulders as they walk almost too close.

"I'm making sushi," Taka tells Tezuka, "If you and Tomo would like to join us."

Tezuka is about to say yes, when he notices, for the first time, really, that Tomo carries a tennis racket with her bag

"I don't think we will tonight," Tezuka says, "but I will give you a call if that changes."

Taka nods and the rest of the team gathers their bags and heads out, as Tezuka goes to sit by Tomo.

"They are going for sushi, if you would like to join them," Tezuka says, gently taking her book and closing it. "Or if you would like," he continues, hesitating only briefly, "We could play a game? Of tennis?"

She looks up at him and smiles, brightly. "I would like that," she says, "Very much."

And so they play. They play until the sun sets, missing sushi and very nearly missing her curfew, and while he wins, it was a closer game than he was expecting--she was good enough for a place on the school team, if she were a boy.

"How did you learn?" he asks, and she shrugs.

"I practice against a wall," she says, "and I often play An and, when I can convince them, my brothers. But I don't play as much as I would like."

But she could now, her realized, as he reached down to take her hand, because she was part of his team.

**Author's Note:**

> Omake:
> 
> When Ryoma arrived back to Japan at the end of the summer, in preparation for the start of his sophomore year, he was surprised to find the court in the back of his house filled with people. He watched, in the shadows, for a time, as the sun set and Tomo and Tezuka played, until Kaidoh found Karupin and the entire team came and drowned him in hugs and exclaimations, and promises of matches. It would be a good year for tennis.


End file.
